“I’m not asking you to, Jameson.” Avery brought her hand to his abdomen, just under his rib cage—his bruised and battered rib cage. “I am asking you,” she continued fiercely, “to remember that this matters.” His pain. His body. “You matter.”
Once upon a time, he would have had a flippant response for that, would have deployed it like a grenade. But not now. Not with her. “I went to see Ian last night.” The admission came out more pained than he would have liked—or maybe that was his jaw. “Don’t look at me like that, Heiress. I know what I’m doing.”
He knew—now and always—what it took to win.
“At least let us clean you up,” Zella said, her voice no-nonsense. “Believe me, the Proprietor won’t thank you for leaving a bloody trail across the Mercy.”
Jameson let them tend to him, his body throbbing, his mind pulsing, his thoughts singular. What’s next? He’d won on the tables. He’d won in the ring. That left two areas—besides this one—in the Devil’s Mercy.
And each of those two rooms held a book.
Those books hold more.… unconventional wagers. Any wager written into one of those books and signed for is binding, no matter how bizarre. Jameson meditated on that bit of information as antiseptic and bandages were applied to his cuts, as his ribs were wrapped. As he pulled his shirt and jacket back on, his body screaming its objections now that the adrenaline of the fight was starting to ebb away.
“What would you do,” Jameson asked Zella, his mind sorting through an array of possibilities, “if you wanted to get the Proprietor’s attention?”
It wasn’t just his attention Jameson needed.
“Surprise him.” Zella turned and ran one hand lightly through the waterfall on the wall. “Or make him think that you have something he wants. Or if you have as little sense as it appears…” The duchess turned from the wall, her brown eyes settling on his. “Make him see you as a threat.”
“You know about the Game,” Avery said, and there was no question in her voice as she took a step toward the duchess. “You want in—if you’re not in already. Why would you help us?”
Help me, Jameson thought.
“Because I can.” Zella looked from Avery to Jameson. “And because the advantage to choosing one’s competition is knowing one’s competition.”
Any help she gave him served her own ends. “And you know me?” Jameson challenged.
“I know risk-takers,” Zella said. “I know privilege.” The duchess let that word hang in the air, and then she looked from Jameson to Avery. “I know love.”
You know a hell of a lot more than that, Jameson thought.
Zella smiled slightly then, almost as if she’d heard him clear as day. “I know,” she said, “that there’s more than one way to shatter glass.”
And with that, the duchess made her exit.
“What did Ian say to you?” Avery asked him as soon as they were alone. “When you went to see him—what the hell did he say?”
Jameson didn’t make her call Tahiti. “He offered to leave me Vantage when he dies, if I win it back for him now.”
Avery stared at—and into—him. “You could win it for yourself.”
That was true. It had always been true. But Jameson couldn’t help thinking about Ian saying that he didn’t care for whist. About the laugh he’d managed to surprise out of the man, so much like his own.
“I can’t win anything for anyone,” Jameson bit out, a ball rising in his throat, “if I don’t get an invitation to the Game.”
Every bruise on his body was a live wire, but the only thing that mattered was what was next. Surprise the Proprietor. Tempt him. Threaten him. “Time to get back out there.”
To Avery’s credit, she didn’t try to talk him out of it—just handed him a quartet of over-the-counter pain pills and a bottle of water. “I’m coming with you.”
Game on.
CHAPTER 43
JAMESON
The food smelled delicious—or so Jameson was informed, since he couldn’t smell anything at the moment. Eating was also out the question.
“Could I get you some soup, sir?” The bartender looked more like a bouncer. Like the dealers in the gaming room, he wore clothes lifted straight out of another era. No jewels around his neck, but Jameson caught a thick ring on his middle finger.
A triangle embedded inside a circle inside a square.
“Or something a little stronger?” The bartender lifted a crystal goblet onto the bar. The liquid inside was a dark shade of amber, almost gold.
“Soup and spirits,” Avery murmured into the back of Jameson’s head. “Think they offer that to everyone who survives the ring?”
Jameson’s body drank in the closeness of hers, allowing it to fuel his resolve, and then he cut to the chase with the bartender. “I’m after the book.”
The bartender looked Jameson up and down. The man appeared to be in his forties, but Jameson thought suddenly of the boy in the boat that first night and wondered exactly how long this gentleman had worked at the Devil’s Mercy.
Exactly how loyal to the Proprietor he was.
“Ah.” The bartender reached below again, and this time, he withdrew a leather-bound tome that looked like it weighed too much to be so easily maneuvered with one hand. One very large hand, Jameson noted.
“Are the two of you looking to place any bet in particular?” the bartender asked.
Avery stepped back. “Not me,” she said. “Just him.”
Jameson knew how hard it was for her to sit this one out, just like she knew that he was the one who needed to impress. Ignoring the pang of the distance Avery had just put between them, Jameson flipped open the book. “May I?”
The bartender laid his massive hands flat on the bar, just behind the book, but said nothing as Jameson began to flip through it. The pages were yellowed with age, the dates beside the earliest bets written in script so formal it was difficult to read.
December 2. Jameson finally made out one date on the first page. 1823.
Beneath each date was a single sentence. Each sentence contained two names.
Mr. Edward Sully bets Sir Harold Letts one hundred fifty that the eldest daughter of the Baron Asherton will not be wed before the younger two.
Lord Renner bets Mr. Downey, four hundred to two hundred, that Old Mitch will die in the spring (spring defined as the latter half of March, the whole of April, the whole of May, and the first week of June).
Mr. Fausset bets Lord Harding fifty-five that a man, agreed upon in confidence between the two, will take on a third mistress before his wife begets their second child.
No wonder the book was so large. It contained every random wager ever placed at the Devil’s Mercy—or at least in this room. Political outcomes, social scandals, births and deaths, who would wed who and when and in what weather and with what guests in attendance.
Jameson flipped to more recent bets. “Are there any rules,” he asked the bartender, “on what one may or may not wager?”
“This room is dedicated to longer-term outcomes, three months or more. If you’re looking to place a bet on the shorter term, you’ll require the book next door. Beyond that, you may wager on anything for which you have a taker, with the understanding that all wagers will be enforced.”
Jameson looked up. Compared to the ring, attendance in this room was sparse, but every man—and the one woman—present was paying attention to his exchange with the bartender, some doing less to hide their interest than others.
One man, who looked to be in his thirties, stood and crossed the room. “I’d wager ten thousand that this lad gets himself killed before he’s thirty. Any takers?”
“If you exclude illness and require the death be the result of his own actions?” Another man stood. “I’m in.”
Jameson ignored them. He caught Avery’s eyes, a silent warning for her to do the same. As the bet was written into the book and signed, Jameson let his gaze come to rest on the bartender’s ring. That and a mirror behind the shelves of liquor were the most likely points from which the Proprietor could observe.